Student study of a tooth

How do you directly address General Education objectives in a course on Tooth Morphology for a program in Restorative Dentistry? Professor Daniel Alter came up with creative means to overcome this conundrum by using the OpenLab to increase student participation and by assigning an interesting paper assignment.

Professor Alter’s class website is filled with handouts, videos, links to his powerpoint lectures, as well as instructions. In his paper assignment, students were asked to consider the perceptions of beauty in dental practice across diverse cultures. Students uploaded abstracts of their paper to the class site. Their introductions reflect the diverse level of cultural engagement with dental practice from Bali to Japan and South Africa. You can read examples of his students’ research here.